


Father of a Troublemaker

by Oak_Leaf



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: (probably), Canon Compliant, Family, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Hamiathes' Gift Exchange, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-17 13:36:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11852673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oak_Leaf/pseuds/Oak_Leaf
Summary: A look at what the Minister of War went through as Gen's father."We shouldn't have named him Eugenides."





	Father of a Troublemaker

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lostsheepdog](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lostsheepdog/gifts).



> I would like to preface this by saying that I do not own a copy of The Thief, and was not able to reference it while I was writing. So I apologize for any canon that I may have unintentionally skewed here. (Do let me know if I've gotten anything wrong, tho!)
> 
> Lostsheepdog, I hope you enjoy!

  
When Gen was two, he grinned at his father, and Eddis’s Minister of War knew in his bones that the boy was trouble. That crooked slant to his mouth, paired with the playful gleam in his eyes, was all too familiar. The Minister of War saw the same expression almost every day on the face of his wife.

  
“We shouldn’t have named him Eugenides,” he grumbled.

  
His wife laughed. “You promised. I let you name Sten after some stuffy general, it was my turn. And besides,” she continued, scooping up her boy and kissing both his cheeks. “A name doesn’t make the child.”

  
“Hm,” was the Minister of War’s only comment. He watched his wife tickle their son, and smiled quietly at the shrieking peals of laughter.  
  


* * *

   
  
By the time Gen was seven, he was creating enough mischief and messes for three children.

  
If it was not pranks, it was insults to his cousins. If it was not insults, it was his stubborn attempts to try out the skills he picked up from his mother and maternal grandfather on the other boys in the dormitory. He was too attached to Eugenides the Elder, in the Minister of War’s opinion. Gen was beginning to develop the old man’s frustrating trait of being sly and sharp without having those dressed in likability. (It would be better if he grew more like his mother. She charmed and endeared herself to people's hearts, even while she slipped away a necklace or insinuated a nasty thing. She was not called Queen Thief for nothing.)

  
And while the children mostly dealt with their issues themselves, word of his son’s antics would still reach the Minister of War. Gen had snuck eggs from the kitchen and hidden them in a cousin’s pillow. Gen had mocked an older, bigger boy for his inability to read. (Reading. That incorrigible Thief’s work, again.) Gen had consequently gotten his head dunked in a water trough. And the boy was only seven.

  
He was precocious, if nothing else. And he was certainly much else.

  
His father had more than here-say to go off. He had witnessed Gen’s behavior first hand. During a riding lesson the Minister had held for his youngest children, Gen had had the audacity to steal his father’s cloak pin. It had been one of many riding lessons. Agathe, the Minister’s youngest daughter, had quickly taken to riding. She had mastered the placid, older pony, and moved on to a younger and more playful one some time ago. She delighted in the animals; she was just as delighted to remind her brother of the difference in their riding skills. Gen was younger than her, yes, but still he should have moved on already from Ari, an animal slower than the spring thaw in the mountains.

  
“Don’t cling to its neck so. Sit up straight,” the Minister instructed.

  
“But I’ll _fall_.”

  
Unlikely. And if he did, the ground was relatively soft and only a short distance down.

  
“Sit up,” the Minister repeated.

  
Reluctant and pouting, Gen loosed his grip on Ari and straightened. His father nodded in approval. “Now,” he said, “trot the pony.”

  
Starting at a walk, the boy slowly brought her to a faster pace, and together they looped around the yard outside the stables. His face was pale, only seeming to grow whiter with each jolt that shook his body as the animal moved. He bounced up and down erratically, swaying a little.

  
His father watched, letting them make three laps around the yard. (And deciding to ignore the way his son and daughter kept sticking their tongues at each other from across the yard.) As Gen returned around the third time, he rocked a little more violently on the pony. Eyes widening, the boy began to slip off her back. He fumbled, trying to catch his balance, but clearly he would drop.

  
The Minister should have let him tumble down. Falling was part of riding horses; it was a lesson the boy needed to learn. But he stepped forwards to stand beside the pony, and reached one hand to catch hold the her mane, and the other to catch his son. Gen landed on his father’s chest, with a squeak of fear, grasping at him grasping at him.

  
“You’re all right,” his father reassured quietly. After a moment, he gently pushed the boy back onto Ari’s back, and stepped away. He felt his cloak pull a bit, then slip. Glancing down, he saw that his cloak pin had disappeared. He looked back at his son and fixed him with a hard stare.

  
The innocent look Gen wore, in and of itself, was enough to give his father gray hairs.

  
It was _those_ tendencies, which motivated the boy to just that sort of thing, that had the Minister worried. As he grew older, Gen would only start more squabbles, more fights, steal more items (and from those who would not be as forgiving as the boy’s father). He would bring chaos and discord on himself, and not always have his father and siblings at hand to face the repercussions with him.  
 

* * *

   
  
“I’m going to be Thief of Eddis,” declared a nine-year-old Gen. Most of his family, when they heard of his intentions, laughed it off. ( _Gen_? That small pesk?) His father didn’t. _Trouble_ , he thought, and pinched the bridge of his nose while he pictured all that _this_ would bring on. Gen wasn’t the first of his children who had deviated from the accepted careers and behaviors in Eddis. No, far from it. But, none of his children had ever said they would be Thief.

  
“It’s not against thieves, in general,” he explained to his wife, when she had fixed him with a wry look after prying his worries out of him. “The problem is in his recklessness, and his aptitude for mischief.”

  
He left out the issue of King's Thief, and his belief that it was an archaic, obsolete role. They had had that argument before, more than once. He felt the position should cease, she disagreed strongly. And he didn’t feel the need to revisit the discussion now. (King’s Thief _was_ obsolete, and Gen had no business even considering it. If it weren’t for that old fool’s influence, he never would have in the first place.)

  
“He’s a child,” his wife reminded him. “Children are like that.”

  
“Yes, but he will grow into an even more reckless man if he isn’t reigned in.”

  
His wife narrowed her eyes, very slightly. “Isn’t it a pity you chose such a reckless, mischievous woman to be his mother, then,” she shot back, sharply.

  
He stared at her. “I never think that. You know I’m only concerned for him.”

  
She held his stare and returned it with a steel one of her own. After a bit, she sighed. Her stance dropped a little, a weary dipping of her shoulders. He held out one hand of his hands, and she took it with a squeeze. “I do worry, too,” she replied quietly. “However, the life of a soldier is no less dangerous, for all you understand it better.”

  
He knew that.

  
“And you know,” she continued. “The danger of trying to be King’s Thief could be lessened with a little training...”

  
The Minister of War frowned. “No. He’s not training with your father.”

  
“Well.” The familiar grin slid back onto her face. “We’ll just need a little more time to convince you otherwise.”  
 

* * *

   
  
The winter that Gen was newly ten, Eddis saw one of the warmest seasons it had in years. The snow was light for the mountains, and the ice relatively thin. On a rare icy evening, the Queen Thief of Eddis happened to choose to venture onto the palace roof for a dance. And it became the year that Eugenides’s mother fell.

  
A patch of ice had been hidden in the shadows of the stones on the walls. As surefooted as she had been, she had lost her footing on the slick surface as she started back down, falling past the window she had meant to climb into.

  
Her family mourned.

 

* * *

 

Not all boys in Eddis joined the army at thirteen, but many did. Even those who did not make a career of it served a term at least. And although less girls officially involved themselves in the military, those that did were still of a fair amount.

  
Gen turned thirteen, and his father promptly confronted him in the Great Hall and handed him enrollment papers. Gen took them, carelessly looked over the writing, and then ripped the papers loudly. He threw the torn strips in the air and stomped away. The whole court gaped at the scene.

  
It was not the first such incident between the two. Over the past few years, Minister of War and his youngest son had a noticeably tense relationship. Biting words. Stony silence. The Minister of War had commanded his son to cease the so-called _training_ with Eugenides the Elder; while his grandfather was still alive, Gen had pointedly disobeyed.

  
After the death of the Queen Thief, her husband had put his foot down on all that thief foolishness. He refused to see his son involve himself any further, to lose himself to that life and that end. The boy would be a soldier—a career that might come with a no more pretty end, but at the very least was honest and dependable. No sneaking about, or cavorting on roofs. A soldier didn’t have to worry that his general would one day decide to march them thoughtlessly over a cliff. (A soldier didn’t have to worry that a god he trusted would some day choose to drop him.) Gen, being Gen, was uncooperative with his father’s plans.

  
He refused outright. He mocked the army and belittled the men who chose to be soldiers (which did little for his popularity with his cousins).

  
There had times that the boy and his grandfather disappeared for weeks on end, to who knew where, and the Minister of War was left with no idea when or if they’d return.

  
After Gen had moved from the boy’s dormitory to the palace library, he was harder to keep track of. It had been a rare occasion that his father spotted him in the court when the he had given Gen the enrollment papers. He followed the boy, and caught up to him before he had stormed out of the hall. Dropping a hand on Gen's shoulder, he turned him around to face him.

  
“What was that?” he demanded.

  
“Enrollment papers. Which I tore up,” Gen said, infuriatingly. He shook his father off. "Or could you even read them to know what they were?"

  
The Minister narrowed his eyes. "You will not speak to your father so disrespectfully, Eugenides.”

  
Gen pulled back and straightened sharply, in an exaggerated parody of a soldier at attention. “Sorry, _father_.”

The conversation went further down hill from there. As angry words shot back and forth, Gen was barely not shouting, and the Minister of War’s voice was at a low, dangerous tone. The Minister had to clench his fist to keep from shaking his son.

  
Finally, Gen stormed away, presumably back to hide in the library. Before he left, he spat a final barb back at his father, and then he was gone. The Minister of War was left standing alone in the hallway.

 

* * *

   
   
Eugenides became a folk hero when he was fifteen. He had hardly been seen that year—one night he had disappeared, and gone off gallivanting across the whole of the Little Peninsula, pursuing a legend in the hopes it would secure his cousin’s throne. Consequently, he was making a name for himself and diving into the thick of all kinds of trouble.

He returned with a little more warning than when he had left. A messenger came from the border with Attolia, and informed the queen that Eugenides had appeared with two Sounisians. Shortly after, he reached the city, and was brought before Eddis. The court watched as the queen greeted him and smiled. From among them, the Minister of War watched as well, and he felt the strong desire to take the foolish boy by his shirt and shake him. He resisted the urge, and ignored the looks cast his way as the crowd began to murmur.

The court had seen Gen, the troublesome boy they all knew, enter the Hall. When they watched him produce Hamiathes’s Gift and offer it to their queen, they watched the Thief of Eddis. The Minister of War felt the change ripple around him. It could be heard in the awed silence that fell as they gaped as one at the stone, and in the new whispers once they could speak again. He paid less attention to the stone than them; he was distracted by the sight of his son passing out and dropping to the floor.

For more than a week, Gen tossed in a fever that left Galen dreading the worst. In the absence of his first hand account of his journey, those who were curious developed their own ideas of what happened. The gossip and rumors never reached the library, where his father, siblings, and the queen of Eddis herself could often be found. They waited and paced outside the door to his room.

And then, the illness broke. Suddenly. Galen was at a loss as to explain why or how, but no one else was much concerned with that. Gen was recovering, and that was all that mattered. The Minister of War had never seen his queen smile more brightly.

"Now that he's doing better, I should see what Sounis and Attolia have to say," Eddis sighed. "They will have heard about the Gift by now, and I've put off dealing with them long enough."

She stood, smoothing her very wrinkled skirt. The Minister of War truly took note, for the first time, of the sought-after stone hanging from her neck. He was pleased by the sight. With it, she presented an air of command and right, and something not quite definable that sent a shiver up his spine. She would have no one questioning her throne now, and her Minister of War only wished the monarchs of Sounis and Attolia would see her like that.

Before she left, she squeezed his hands in both of her own. "He is Thief now," she said quietly, with a soft smile. "I don't think you avoid it any longer."

The Minister patted her hands, but otherwise did not reply.

He did not stay long in the library after she had left. He had spent far more of his time in there during the past week than he should have, and there were duties he had neglected during that. Once Eugenides had woken and was himself, his father visited again. The Minister quietly stood in the doorway, watching until Gen looked up and caught sight him. His father smiled at him, and Gen returned the expression with a familiar, welcome grin.


End file.
